Oddities, musings and news from the health world

Is swine flu a conspiracy?

April 28, 2009 | 12:44
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With so much worldwide panic and pressure surrounding swine flu, you had to guess that the conspiracy theorists would come out of the woodwork.

Everyone wants to find what pig was the original carrier. Everyone wants to know if the government is behind this. The FBI? The CIA? Is this is a great pandemic that was warned about by Nostradamus? Is Donald Rumsfeld secretly planning our demise to make money with Tamiflu? And who stands to gain?

As the news continues to break, and everyone wants to name a bad guy first, let’s take a look at the theories swirling around the Interweb.

Is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer, linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated.

As the world gears up once again for a flu pandemic that may or may not arrive (it actually seems possible this time), we might want to remember some of the lessons of the last flu scare. One of these is that there are winners as well as losers in every high-profile outbreak of infectious disease. First and foremost among them, of course, is Big Pharma, which can always be counted on to have its hand out wherever human misery presents an opportunity to rake in some cash.

From LayScientist.net:This site wryly rounded up an array of blogs and tweets crying “Conspiracy!” A sample of the notes posted there:

ATTENTION AMERICA!!!! This is highly significant. The WHO "Pandemic Control Room" is a creation of the Illuminati elite for the final "end-game" killer virus mapping and tracking, and is thus equipped with super-computers tied to all U.N. member government's security forces.

Obama makes an official visit to Mexico, and a short week later, Mexico City schools, Universities and all PUBLIC BUILDINGS are shut down in pandemic fear -- (for the first time since the devastating 1985 earthquake!) Again, is this just a bizarre co-incidence??"

From Twitter:How could we leave out the latest Internet phenomenon? Love it or hate it—Twitter is being talked about and used. Who knew that in 140 characters, hundreds of little tweet-ed paranoias could be passed and spread, much like a virus. From Twitter user @supergodiva:

It's not an unreasonable question to ask: Could world governments, spooked by the prospect of radical climate change caused by over-population of the planet, have assembled a super-secret task force to engineer and distribute a super virulent strain of influenza designed to "correct" the human population (and institute global Martial Law)?